The Isolation Diaries No. 36

“Integrity cannot be reduced to cupidity, decency cannot be reduced to chicanery, and justice cannot be reduced to market price.” Dr. Cornel West, Black Prophetic Fire

Bubbling, simmering, seething, the echo of old warnings roll across the land. Told you so. Told you so. Told you so. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, James Baldwin, Tupac, Ida B. Wells, Cornel West, Colin Kaepernick, Kendrick Lamar. The fire next time is burning now, an expression of rage, fury, disillusion, despair, sadness, anger, and fatigue with a brutal status quo. George Floyd’s murder in broad daylight by a Minneapolis police officer may be remembered as the flashpoint, the last straw, and possibly a turning point. 

Many voices have warned us of the consequences of unfettered predatory capitalism, endless foreign wars, and a political system so corrupted by money and perverse ideology that it cannot function on behalf of the public. This American house, its rooms filled with past sins, rots on its broken foundation.

Militarized police forces routinely brutalize black and brown people; the stock market rises while millions of people lose their jobs; the corrupt federal government with the orange clown at its head downplays a pandemic and then botches the response, with thousands of citizens dying needlessly; food banks are stretched to their limits; white weekend warriors armed with assault rifles demand their individual liberty at the expense of others; the wealthy profit as the death count from Covid-19 increases. 

The American Dream died and was laid to rest years ago. Smug Republicans intoxicated with power, compromised Democrats addicted to corporate money, piss on its grave every day. The inevitable American nightmare is upon us and there should be no surprise at its arrival. Many voices have warned us of the consequences of unfettered predatory capitalism, endless foreign wars, and a political system so corrupted by money and perverse ideology that it cannot function on behalf of the public. This American house, its rooms filled with past sins, rots on its broken foundation. Mold. Mildew. Dry Rot. Termites. The house is haunted, and the bloodstains will never wash away. 

We have wrought this. We slept while they stole from us our present and future. Don’t lament property damage and looting; the real looting takes place in broad daylight under an impressive dome, in the White House by white men and women, on the floor of the United States Senate, takes place not at the barrel of a gun but with the flourish of a pen. Sickness and perversity, a delight in cruelty, like reducing food stamps in the middle of a pandemic, like forcing our lowest paid workers back to work before it’s safe, like pampering the wealthy while the poor are criminalized, jailed, murdered in broad daylight. A white cop kneels on a black man’s neck even though he knows he’s being filmed with a cellphone. He’s not worried because he knows -- he knows -- he’s not going to face any consequences, not in Minneapolis. His partners lift not a finger as the black man slowly, painfully dies; they’re indifferent to his pleas. 

White people are fucked up. I’m one of them. I’ve not done enough. This blog is a joke, a scream in a typhoon, unheard, drowned out in the vortex. 

America’s utter corruption, spiritual and moral emptiness, violence and cruelty cannot be reformed from within. We are in desperate need of another Reconstruction, but one without the domestic terrorism and systematic injustice. White people must face the truth: white supremacy is not only bullshit, it’s deadly. We’re not better than non-white people, not smarter or more evolved, and definitely not morally superior.  

Roll call of the dead off the top of my head: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Freddy Gray, Treyvon Martin, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice. There are so many more. 

Answer me this, America: How do we find our way with a broken moral compass?